


thoughtless and self centered

by summerson



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Ava gives everyone the runaround, Gen, Happy Birthday, beatrice is mad because she cares, because of course she does that's why we love her, big sister!Ava, camila doesn't even actually show lol, everyone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, except you Camila, little brother!Diego, mary's fed up, one day i'll learn to just write fluff, pre-arc Lilith's coming for your ass, social work, these are bad tags, you're and angel and we're thrilled to have you here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28963347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerson/pseuds/summerson
Summary: She gives pause. “What are you doing?”“Just...making wishes,” Ava supplies, the halo of the remaining candle light cloaking across her contemplative face.Beatrice turns to look at the candles dripping fingers of wax down the sides.“A little juvenile don’t you think?”.AU that takes place prior to Ava running from Cat’s Cradle
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Comments: 11
Kudos: 89





	thoughtless and self centered

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve got so many WIPS I could cry. Have this while I stress over the 10 other things I’ll probably never finish (not an exaggeration, I'm actually my worst nightmare). If you see me on the discord feel free to stop by and grieve with me lol.
> 
> Also, the translations for this aren’t as smooth as I’d like them to be so I added a key in English at the end notes.

Beatrice stands on the sidelines of Cat’s Cradle’s training grounds. The orange blaze of fire and receding sun striked across the peaks, lighting the rock ridge a brilliant surmounting flare. It’s the end of the day. Or more aptly, the beginning of the end. The grounds of the Order’s sett’s cast red, its spiral steeples decked in gold on the rafters before dusken nightfall, rack lines painted umber and soaking in evening haze…the valley seem set aflame in fury passioned sunset.

_The impact of oak grain met flesh_

“Keep your core centered.”

Lilith.

_Thwack!_

From the ringside border the nun watches the halo bearer’s teeth screw tight together on the lock of her jaw, Beatrice’s own feet toeing white chalk and bar as she bears witness to the unfold. The smaller of the two opponents fetters aside, her brow curled up and together in uncertainty, indecisiveness of action - she stumbles backwards over her knees away from the intrusive jabs that probe at her defenses. A single trail slips down the curve of her eye reflected in unfixed panic. She’s scrabbling. Uprooted.

“Maintain your stance.” Ava squeezes her eyes shut and heaves once before she’s forced to account for the threat of her opponent. Offset another step and gripping down on the base of her oak staff - deep into blister and callous.

Lilith circles a wide foresightful arc around the bearer. Her chin tilted low over pointed harnessed gaze down the mark. Down to Ava - still wavering static on the spot in fear of the simmering attack. Both warriors were loosely fitted and fettered in standard training garb, something easy and breathable. The appearance reads dramatically different to when the bearer first came to them several weeks prior. Lanky limbless body turning rigid and lithe underneath the Cat’s Cradle blue, and her movements over time - if not graceful - turned slowly conscious and aware. Small improvements, small steps towards reintegrating into an uninhabited body. Though Ava struggles to pace her air regulation, monitor her adrenaline - establish any hold or control over the rapidly deteriorating situation at hand. Beatrice stares on at her wavering stance, at her arms which are beginning to shake under a strain and flickering endurance. To feint away would surmount in nothing but a subsistent thrashing, to block would be pointless against Lilith’s unyielding force, to attack…

“Strike with fire!”

Beatrice sidles around the rim, weaving amongst the backs of her fixated sisters who watch on in rapt attention. Lilith’s cruel exhibition unflinchingly persistent - sufficing some masochistic satisfaction of spectacle within all of them. And even though this isn’t the first sparring session the halo bearer had been subject to, it was certainly proving the most oppressing.

Mother Superion had been quick to introduce Ava to the standard operative routine. Up at 5am and ushered into four to five hour work outs rotated with evening weights on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Three meals a day, supplements - calculated precisely to accommodate body type, macro goals, and caloric measurements based on the given work out in preparation for energy expenditure. With optional walks for promotive circulation being highly suggested towards when given leave from her studies with Vincent. All in all being interspersed with an occasional assessment duel to appropriately track any and all progress marks.

Several of Ava’s assessments up unto this point had been moderated by the master of arms, an indifferent if not caring administrator who pulled a few punches in favor of saving a couple of ribs and healing time. Some others by Mary. And though Beatrice hadn’t the chance to experience first hand, Ava’s PR times had been…incremental. Gradual.

But Lilith’s integration into this had been constant. A ‘consolation prize’ some had said. An informal promotion to occupying as the halo bearer’s primary instructor for obvious reasons and context. But Beatrice knew Lilith’s feelings on the matter….years dedicated to training and study in preparation for the generational appeal and inheritance of legacy - all but sworn to and promised - all but bestowed and crowned! Boiled down to…a glorified babysitter.

The senior nun lands a solid resounding hit across the bearer’s open side, easily evading the reflexive block and countering with a pairing jab to offset. Ava is easily flung backwards and her opponent sneers. Approaches sordidly with one easy step as her lip curls to a sneer of thinly veiled disgust. “If you can’t hope to save yourself how do you expect to defend the lives of your sisters?”

The girl’s stance turns rigid and Beatrice can see something slip on both parts. Lilith’s eyes darken, coiled strike too tempted by the open beating heart at hand to steer otherwise. Control turned to release. Instinct bled in satisfaction. A shade so fettered and phased it’s hard to define when personal becomes…malicious.

“You know…” She says, advancing quick and evasive, directly into the bearer’s available space and landing a solid hit on the adjoining point of the girls’ shoulder. Ava breaks down to one knee, rigid bone slammed down so hard Beatrice’s bones tingle with ache. The nun looms overhead, eyes hard and sparking red flint. Her breath draw hard, though she’s barely broken a sweat. “I’ll admit,” she says, snagging an offhanded clip on the younger girl’s cheek.

“When Mother Superion instructed me to test your limits,” Ava grunts as she brings up the shaft double handed to block her face, staffs trembling with tension as the pressure bears down like seething electricity.

“I had low expectations - ” the warrior grinds, parrying and entwining Ava’s staff with a coordinated twist to direct it wayward and flying out of grasp! Beatrice’s nails bite down into the flesh of her palms - _the weapon come thrashing across Ava’s exposed head!_

Ava flinches harshly. So hard and vulnerable no one who has congregated to watch the exhibition reads surprised when the older girl physically rams Ava off her stance and out kicks her legs from underneath in a fluid excited sweep. Beatrice sucks in a feather of breath at the sound of fracturing force compounded against Ava’s chest, crooning high into the dying light shattering over the tops of the range above.

.

.

.

“But this?” The nun glowers. “This is pathetic.”

…

Beatrice can’t explain the stone dropped down in her gut, or how infantasmal Ava now appears out in the middle of the sparring mat. Forehead pressed into the matted rough weave as she catches her breath. Small little clouds of heat puffing in front of her as her lungs pull in, cheeks huff out, and curled in on her center as she clutches at her bruised middle.

The sister warriors begin to disperse in the background. The descent of light and dome signaling the close of training and evening vespers. Their mulling tones droning over like white noise and churning chatter. Though Beatrice’s eyes stay fixed as she watches the girl still doubled over flat on the floor. She doesn’t make to move; the tension in her frame rendering like static as her muscles constrict and distill the discomfort.

Beatrice watches past the river turned to trickle of nuns. She listens to their showering footsteps and ruffling fabrics, filtering past their veil of uniforms and noise until Ava eventually struggles upwards and down on the front of her shins, one hand rooted into earth to help distribute and support her shuddering frame while the other holds in her purpling center - eyes screwed closed and face trebling westward. The sun a disparaging orange in the sky across the mountains of Andalusia.

Lilith steps down from the mat, unwrapping her blood speckled combat tape from around her fist as she brushes past Beatrice.

“That was uncalled for,”

The taller’s imposing form stills side face, her shoulder just close enough it brushes into orbit. She turns her gaze down to Beatrice. The static of challenge and abrasion as the sisters foresee each other. They’re evenly matched on most accounts. The elder having a marginal height and strength advantage she doesn’t want to press luck on. But Beatrice is faster, and the senior warrior’s ego does more than just to slow her down.

Lilith is silent.

Beatrice doesn’t back down.

“It’s for her own good.” She states finally, dismissive and brisk before steering back to course and exits…probably not a fight worth having anyway. From the threaded padding she can hear Ava’s breathing rattle out her lungs.

Beatrice holds a moment more before she herself turns and departs.

__________

It would happen that Beatrice finds Ava afterwards…amidst the halls of Cat’s Cradle after meal times, sheltered off in one of the mural alcoves carved into the walkways, and notably unsupervised at that. However, the nun’s first impression of the halo bearer doesn’t strike discord or ill behavior so she’s willing to let it slide on good faith. She takes a few estimating steps forward into Ava’s orbit. The young girl is perched atop the stone cut out where she sits under a painted and saintly idol, the peeling tresses of his green robe chipping from time and endurance - his walking stick grasped gently in caressing weathered hands.

It’s impossible for her passing to have gone unnoticed; they’re the only ones occupying the hall. But Ava says nothing, too casually engaged in studying the flicker flame wicks of the altar pyre.

“Really got my ass handed to me, didn’t I?” Ava suddenly says.

Beatrice studies her once and cursory, the swell of her face unguarded and glowing in candle light. Honesty seems the only supplement to comfort.

“It didn’t look fun from my perspective,” she concedes.

Ava snorts at that. “Wasn’t all that great from the floor’s point of view either.”

The nun pulls back incrementally so that she can catch the curve of Ava’s face - outlined by the candle halos reverberating flare against the misty shadows.

“I know I’m not what you guys need.” She murmurs quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Beatrice wants to gravitate further into atmosphere, an odd instinct to comfort and console like one would a child takes over from subconscious. It may be the way Ava’s clothes outfit too loosely around her frame, the osmium vest weighting down on her chest like shackle plating and heavy leaded legacies. The twist of her contemplation and worry reading across the clouds in her eyes. Frustration piling under rock and sediment, crushed to dust, driven through fear, pressurizing to diamond. Dead and risen from unknowns to more unspokens, to countless unsaids, and finally surrounded by people who decided the liberties of consent on the basis of what was best.

“…that’s hardly your fault,” she settles on.

Ava contemplates the flicker before speaking again. “I promise to try and do the right thing.”

The conversation reads empty, put to bed and Beatrice reluctantly accepts dismissal, but pauses in her departure when she watches Ava lean up and snuff a candle out with a quick and decided puff. The flame flickering violent and winnowing within an instant to silken smoke trails that begin ribboning upwards to aether. The movements are liquid and drifting as they dance higher to peaceful extinction and Beatrice watches as the tether turns smokey silver thread to hazened cloud and further still to nothing against the pallid saint’s profile. Ava does it again, eyes fixed to the red petal as it extinguishes under her breath.

She gives pause. “What are you doing?”

“Just...making wishes,” Ava supplies, the halo of the remaining candle light cloaking across her contemplative face.

Beatrice turns to look at the candles dripping fingers of wax down the sides.

“A little juvenile don’t you think?”

The watered outwash of light cuts across the girl’s profile. Stark, and cutting so that the strands around her face look limp and strained, wiry, and paled by stress. Trendles of hair swooping forward as her head nods an increment down and the mop of it casts bars against her ragged face. She’s not looking at Beatrice though; she’s fixated on the candles, still flickering on their wicks by the feet of the pious saint. The nun looks up to contemplate his weary heartbroken facade, eyes and cheeks pulled down on the sorry sight below in mercy.

A whisper of laughter, a whisper of breath. “You’re never too old to want something,” she says.

Beatrice says nothing.

__________

It isn’t a week later that Ava goes missing from the grounds. In the dead of night no less, missing rucksacks and enough food from the pantry to feed two people and then some. Of the runaway bearer’s reserves they’d gathered she’d also stolen away with a wad of cash. Not a substantial amount, not even sizable really. But enough to warrant suspicion and question reason of loan and low credit. Beatrice doesn’t know why she feels… - disappointed.

“Why this place?”

Mary looks up from her own concentration and chances a glance at Beatrice in the passenger seat. Both servants of the church, having volunteered to fetch their wayward comrade in arms, had spent the last handful of days combing through the isolated villages fettered throughout costal Spain. And considering the two seemed to retain the best track record in reeling in the young bearer, Mother Superion had raised few qualms at losing them over an otherwise fool’s errand.

The current outlet village they’d meandered into was an innocuous cliffside center that overlooked a cove inlet. It wasn’t anything particularly remarkable, a modest centere, a number of housing patrons and a resident missionary. The church didn’t even appear to have an upkeep past the hosting father. Beatrice failed to understand how such a place would ever hope to keep Ava entertained.

Mary on the other hand had insisted, if they were ever to track her down, such locations were the place to start.

“Isolated, discrete, inconspicuous…nice place to go if I wanted to lay low,” Mary answers.

Beatrice hums as she scans the meandering civilians milling about the village plaza. Alabaster cobble flats splattered chalky white around a chiseled fountain. The soft tunes of la guitara listlessly wafting windwards from a lonely busker’s play - a far beat off of the thrumming base of Barcelona’s night life…There was no way she’d come here.

“Heads up.”

And Beatrice, unsuspecting and innocent, looks up across the stretch of cobble rock to see - Ava…strutting along unabashed and gutless past open market booths and flaps of tent stalls. She’s dressed simply, comfortably, and brandishes an essential laxly manner as she meanders steadily down the brickwork market. The sun is heated and warm as it beats down, guiding each unhurried step until Ava eventually picks a nice sunny patch by the fountain ledge to put up shop and…splay out back flat against the stones.

…perhaps Beatrice had spoken too soon. Her expression must read as much because Mary just tsks and glances at Beatrice from the side.

“She’s smarter than she looks,” she quips, already getting out of the van.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” Ava says. Splayed all loose and melted across the sun washed rock as their footsteps taper and encroach on her leisure. Mary takes the opportunity to impose her shadow across Ava’s face, the younger girl’seyes twitching once before she slowly squints up at the two older women. Her eyes pulled at her brow to crease an incredulous glean.“I was starting to think you didn’t miss me,”

“How’d you figure you were gonna survive out here on your own if you couldn’t even get away with petty theft?” Mary questions blankly as Ava curls upwards like a vine to an upright position. She regards the two of them as if acknowledging them for the first time, appraising and…unsurprised.

Ava looks away then, almost _offended_ as Beatrice watches her mull over the accusation. “Maybe I’d get a job. Work an honest living and save up for an actual car or something.” She looks down at her fingers then, still and reserved in her lap as she contemplates a dangling thread of her shirtsleeve.

“Make my way back to Lisbon…”

She turns back, a stray strand veiling the crease of her eyes as she gazes up at them. “Is that really so hard to believe?”

The strumming of the Cordoba eddies out like the rush of the tide on the rocky pebbled coasts below. Breeze, salted like the sea as the sound of the water rush washes out the trebling melodies. The busker’s callous and scarred fingers plucking out muted songs underneath the undercurrents and king tides. Mary is silent.

“Whether it’s easy or not to believe you’re still a public safety risk.” Ava’s eyes flick to Beatrice as she takes an indifferent step forward.

“Public safety…?” Broaches Ava.

Beatrice tenses. “Do you honestly think your actions haven’t affected anyone around you these past few weeks? The halo isn’t a toy, Ava. It’s a divine instrument and a holy relic - if you can even conceive of the gravity of what that might begin to imply.” Though restrained, Beatrice can feel herself becoming more animated with the velocity of her upset. As does Ava, who’s begun to relinquish her hold on illusive control by the second.“And if that isn’t a matter of itself you seemed to have completely forgotten the halo is essentially an active homing beacon for manifest demons.”

Ava says nothing.

“I mean, if a tarask were to have found you - “

She hesitates.

“You would’ve inflicted irreparable damage.”

No one speaks for a long while.

“We’re here to take you back.”

…

“This isn’t just about you anymore Ava. I almost wish it were that easy…” Mary looks away before she continues to speak. “But for your sake, and everyone else’s - “ Mary takes a casual seat next to Ava on the alabaster, eyes scanning the rows of market lots and listless patrons milling about the stalls. “…I need you to promise not to run away anymore.”

Ava chances a glance at Beatrice who manages to hold her gaze once before compelled to look away.

Ava swallows and looks down at her feet. “I promise.”

__________

Beatrice rides in the back seat for the return journey to Cat’s Cradle. Mary reclined at the wheel while Ava makes space for herself in the passenger seat. Suffice it to say nobody feels it safe to let the runaway bearer out of locked sight for an indefinite period, so the youngest nun tilts her head and trains her eye to the head rest while the silence weights heavy over the three of them. The drum of the road under wheels thundering underneath their only accompaniment. The asphalt rushes like earthen fire below, furious, impounding, definitive. Beatrice wonders if Ava would think to take her chances and jump out.

But there is only silence.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Mary states resolutely under the hum, eyes trained to the strip of asphalt ahead - but smooth, sympathetic as the stone of her gaze skips across the horizon. “Coming back with us,” she explains, the axis of her gaze swiveled just so to the left in a distinct act of faux privacy.

There is quiet over the horizon, over the landscape burnt a brilliant casted wash in fading flickers. It’s not yet late enough for the twilight shadows to darken the arid terrain, or early enough still to call it day. It’s a strange affiliated moment in between. A snapshot of raging searing light that casts the world a brash peel of gold before the sky bleeds out across the horizon. Beatrice recalls the walls brazened red at Cat’s Cradle, embers glown to dust in the hearth and its candles reflected against the cragged bricks like sunset vigils spent in mourning.

Miles ofearthen rock stretch out and paint fire against the sun’s descent…the passion of some dying divine struggle that’s been written in the paths of planets and spheres. Heavenly stars that did burn and rage at the close of day, Beatrice thinks sardonically.

The young nun observes the halo bearer from a safe back seat distance, eyes trebling over the weighted drop of her shoulders into the window side dash. Her head butts up against the glass of the side door, the polyester belt burnt down into the flesh of her neck as she angles up to watch the sun go down into the sea of earth from afar. In the albeit short time Beatrice has made the young girl’s acquaintance, she’s never seemed so deathly still - like a bird knocked down from the sky with heavy weighted stones strewn achingly across the ground. Feathers ruffled and just so rising slowly in the dirt.

…

The low thrum of the engine against the hull is all there is to occupy as bone deep resonations keen Beatrice’s mind towards an empty voided fuzz, gaze fixed to the headrest.

Ava says nothing.

“This really is your only option.”

For the longest time it carries in this respectful easiness, Beatrice quietly mediating and traversing silence along their journey, the sun appearing an orange sinking down from the sky when Ava suddenly uncurls and turns to Mary.

“Wait, stop the van.”

“What?”

“Stop it. Stop the van,” She persists. “Pull over. Stop.”

Mary huffs as a trying sigh ramps behind her chest and exits in a quick exhale. Patience as infinite as it was worn faded. “Ava, I don’t know what else I have to say to convince you that this is in _your_ best interest - “ She starts before Ava overlaps her.

“I _know._ Just pull over here. I need to check something.”

“What could you possibly need to check.” Mary dead flats.

“Just _do_ it.”

Mary doesn’t seem totally bought over, but her frown and eyes downturn deep enough that Beatrice predicts before feeling the side gravel rock crunch underneath tire and still to idling engine. The van plinks to a steady stop in the dark before Mary pops the break stick and Ava is already rising and kicking out the door with a hastened charged _cuthunk!_

“Hey, hold - _for fuck’s sake_ ,” Mary grits under her breath before unfastening her belt and unlatching her own door. Beatrice takes this moment to erect her spine to twist past the side window where she watches Ava already blazing past.

She reaches forward and shutters the sliding door open as her face meets open dry desert air with the first step.

Without explanation, Ava reaches down and pops the hatch open. Double doors arms open with one shoulder shoving past the wall of metal barrier. Beatrice watches hesitantly, chances a glance at Mary who now seems equally perturbed as she stares on. The trunk is expectantly bare. A couple of duffle bags litter the base floor but…it’s empty.

This doesn’t seem to deter Ava who brazenly pushes forward and hefts large bag to the side, and another with purpose in each movement. A mounting focus that’s somewhat disarming with how her brows drop, her face hardens. Eventually, she finds what she’s looking for - underneath all the velcro material where a floor hatch handle embeds itself into the hard fuzz bottom of the van. Beatrice vaguely recognizes it as the spare compartment before curiously watching on as Ava leans forward and pops the latch.

Out of all the things Beatrice might’ve expected Ava to uncover, a ferocious wraith marked higher than the spindly adolescent boy that squints blearingly up at a very unhappy Ava.

“ _Aye! Aye! Espere, espere, espere_!” a disgruntled string of Spanish pitched from the boys yelping mouth.

_“ ‘Yo siempre se lo mejor,’ eh?_ ‘Do as I say, no questions asked?’ ” Ava’s disarming yet fluent overlap of language cuts through the boy’s cries as she grips him fastly by the ear, pinching the cartilage tight enough that his head angles to the side and his arms eddy out front of him in relent. “How long were you stringing me on and ignoring every word I said to you? Answer me!” She demands leaning over him, and giving his ear another wincing yank.

“No estes enjoada,” the boy manages to eek in over Ava’s unearthed fury. Beatrice isn’t used to not knowing what to do. She weighs between the struggle of intervening to keep Ava from tearing the poor boy’s ear off and just leaving her to it. She’s never crossed paths with this strict and disapproving side of the halo bearer - one who’s eyes lighted up with scorn and teeth flashed with a gnashing severity. She’s not sure she wants to. Beside her, Mary seems just as much as a loss as to her place in this unexpected exchange.

“Oh, we’re _way_ past mad. What were you _thinking, Diego!?_ ” Ava finally releases the boys head as his messy mop of hair ruffles free. He stumbles back while the pedal of his flimsy peeling shoes kick up a cloud of dust in the fading light. When he looks up his eyes are shining. “What if I hadn’t thought to check for you? There wouldn’t have been any time to drive back for your fluids!” Ava’s shoulders only pull back by the plates of her spine, shifting and lurching as bears into him again with mounting intensity. Eyes rendering and torn asunder.

“Tengo una bolsa,” he offers weakly, eyes stubbornly cast to the dirt dry grit below his limp tank, stained and torn at the hem like rags. Beatrice takes the time to register stock of the spindly stowaway, now more visible in the glowing red halo of the van’s tail light. He’s not very big, small - even for his age which must’ve been around eight to nine. His dusty tan skin and black mop are unkempt and sleep mussed in a manner that gives him the appearance of being irrevocably ragged. Beatrice casts a cursory glance over the hatch hud he had squirreled away and spots the accused saline bag. The crumpled material is knotted to a tightly wound plastic tube that attaches to a sterilized needle along with a half eaten granola bar rolled up in its wrapper. Beatrice is impressed that she hadn’t heard him, though the pity portrait does little to sway Ava’s apparent disapproval.

The older girl huffs once and dismissive before placing her hands deftly across her sides and paces back in the direction of the van’s open side door - snatching the bag and bar as she goes. “Well it doesn’t matter because we’re taking you back.”

Beatirice is well aware of how off-putting they appear, light from the van’s open doors and back hatch spilling out like a paint splatter into the encroaching dark. The brittle branch spindles of the desert brush around them lighted up to watch the spectacle of two nuns, a young woman, and a child all haplessly gathered around the trunk of their vehicle. It’d be almost laughable if it weren’t so severe.

“No.”

When Beatrice turns back to the boy his frame is no more capable than it was before, but determined and defiant with the set of his chin. His fists clenched out at his sides even as his eyes shine a worried uncertainty. Glaring tail lights light up against the shadows and he looks like a spindle wick, lighted up against the dark - his trembling chin a flicker in flame. It seems he’s not used to this side of their mutual friend either.

“Diego. Get in the car.”

“No.”

_“Diego.”_

“I’m not going back. Not without you.” He insists this time.

“Diego, this isn’t your decision to make. It’s mine. So get in.”

_“No.”_

Beatrice unconsciously adjusts her side stance as Mary sidles up, hands open and complaining when she eddies in between the shouting. “Hey, hey, chill alright? listen maybe - “

“Stay out of this! _Get in_.”

Mary hesitates and the younger of the two nuns thinks to try her luck. “Ava - “

“ _No_. He _knew_ what he was doing. He _knew_ how irresponsible this was. You could have had a _seizure_ back there and I wouldn’t have known!”

He flinches. “Lo siento…”

“No lo suficiente,” Ava almost hisses as she turns away in aggravation. Pacing. Seething as the muscles in her shoulders pull and contract. Her hands clenched in tight fists before they splay and twine in dying light. She turns and makes quick laps up the length of the van before careening back, clouds of haze heralding the rage of dust storm. No one makes to stop her.

Her feet fall short and eyes squeeze shut as she draws a tight breath. “Do you even care? Diego?” She turns, one step forward. “Huh? Do you know the hoops I’ve had to jump through to get you a bed at St. Jude’s? To find a roof for your head and a job you can work? It wasn’t a walk in the park.”

“Porque soy una carga y un lisiado,” Diego grinds out bitterly.

Ava scoffs once and dismissive as she shuffles to an idle side face against the horizon. “Cállate,” she grumbles, face suddenly lost in thought as her eyes search the dim for answers. The sliver band of light brazens a thread of gold on the mountain line across miles of expanse, miles of shadow and valley that make for infinity. Ava stares at it, the remnants of fire branded across her eyes like an illuminated band, breathing, thinking…Beatrice thinks she sees the weight of years written in wrinkles that haven’t quite set, an exhaustion too fresh to mar. She’s too young to appear so old.

“Es verdad!” Diego shouts, finally catching Ava’s attention. “I’m weak and I’m worthless and I’m dying! I can’t do anything to help anybody. - “

“I said shut up. Who’s feeding you this bullshit?” Ava scolds tiredly, a crinkle driven deep between her brows. Her shoulders don’t hold so rigid when she’s turns her head to scrutinize him.

“You! _You!_ Why else would you be leaving!” He cries out in accusation.

“…Diego - “

“Why else would you leave me alone with the nuns at St. Michael’s? At St. Jude’s - if I couldn’t pull my weight!” It’s odd how quickly the roles have switched as Ava contends with her own frustration and the urge to placate Diego’s sudden upset. Her next words sputter with reserved frustration.

“Diego, that’s not - ...you know I would never just leave you - “

“But you did! You did!” He counters, inconsolable. “You left! And you’re leaving again! Just like at St. Michaels! when you killed yourself - “

“Eso es una _mentira!_ \- “ Ava barks, electric volts rendering each step forward as she towers over him like the lightning embedded in storm clouds - till the boy appears the raft of Jonah, swallowed by sea and sky, the disciples cowered ‘neath waves of their own fear and some inevitable natural truth.

_Another step._

“You killed yourself because you knew no one would take care of you after you aged out!”

_She’s going to strike him_

“ _Ava!”_

_Beatrice readies to brace the impact_

“You died because I couldn’t protect you!”

Ava’s arm stills to fist.

“ _You died!_ ” Diego is crying.

The sun a whisper. The luminescent cut of the head lights carves straight into darkness as a car speeds down the freeway. The gust of asphalt runway brisks an indifferent breeze across their shins, Beatrice’s skirts blown back against darkness and dust. And Diego’s shining face turned to waterfalls and rivers, his eyes an open bleeding crater as the night cloak descends. Not a star in sight.

“No me dejes solo! _Por favor!_ ”

...

__________

The landscape outside shutters by in darkness. Distant village match lights pin pricking across the roll of Andalusian fields and valleys. Brittle sand rock and thicket brush gnarling in the low lands… An infinite darkness blotting out the landscape to ink outside the van’s window, melting so past the lantern light of the vehicles headlights which cut through the dark sea. It rolls and melds so willfully together like water that the dry branches are washed out to night, till all that lays beyond be oblivion.

In the distance, lights from the adobe plasters wink across the night so that it appears a shattered comet tail across a void canvas - a scattered arc of star dust flecked across the land.

Ava says nothing as she gazes out at the sparkling fire lights. Her cheek rested against her fist, rested against the door, rested against her knee as she presses into the side - forehead dipped against the glass in soft defeat. And though her face is turned too far out of orbit and sight, the engine light from the dash stretches out an emanate blue that dimly washes over. It’s the only light source in the car, glowing just so illuminate to make believe they’ve inhabited the shallows of an underwater cave…the way it splashes up to the van’s top felt like a rocky cavernous roof…its open spacious curvature like that of a cove lot…

If Beatrice strains her ears, she can just make out the lonely sounds of the dew drops plinking down from the stalactites onto the calm surface of blue.

The keys jostle in the lock and tinkle like bells over a divet pot hole that deftly jostles the vehicle back to reality.

Both Mary and Ava most likely think Beatrice asleep. She should be in order to take the next driving shift, but she squints a cautious eye open to observe Ava’s mellow composition. Beatirce’s own head leans delicately across the window side, and through the shadows and canted angle allow her a visual of Ava’s curving profile. Her posture’s slanted and slumped to convey a quiet sense of grief, soundless and reserved in comparison to the boisterous whining that had haunted the halls of Cat’s Cradle for the last month of Ava’s original stay. The seatbelt slants across like a band in the dark, blocking out Ava’s eyes as they stare consternatly out the window. The strands of her air mussed up enough to stick out in a misshapen disheveled manner. But Beatrice can make out the swell of her cheek as it rises and falls to form a…youthful face. Perfect smooth skin marbled dark and sloping down to the line of her throat.

Beatrice swallows and averts her eyes to the void outside. Only the sound of her rumpling fabrics and the callous taunt of the pavement flying underneath left to warden the peace.

When the silence is broken, it is Ava that speaks first.

“ Niño estúpido…” she mutters, her face obscured from view by placement. Though Beatrice can still make out the structure of her posture, the definition of her profile, the sillouete of her flowing hair that simply reads…Ava.

Mary speaks lowly so as not to disturb any slumbering occupants in the back. “Is he your brother?”

_“Tsh…._ we don’t look alike.”

The side eye Mary shoots her isn’t accusatory. It’s bare, and simple. Open and free of judgement in a manner that demands truth by extension of its own impassive honesty.

“…but he might as well be,” the younger girl supplies. She looks away first even as Mary’s eyes sweep over and linger. Searching and scrying for something before her head turns back to the tunnel of darkness flowing around the windshield.

“Sweet how he came after you…” Mary offers. “Stupid. But sweet.”

“Guess we’ve got that in common…”

“So when you left…?”

Ava is silent for a long time before she speaks again. Beatrice can tell she’s being careful, pondering the words she wants to say and what to give up. Information and confessions so damning and fatal when not accounted for carefully. Beatrice listens to her fingers scratch at the leather of the seat _…what left was there to lose?_

“I had to get him out of the system. My birthday was a week ago so...it was legit. Paper work and everything…” Ava trails here and then turns with an off hand comment. “Hey, isn’t it crazy that a 19 year old could theoretically adopt an 18 year old?” Her chest rattles with the empty chuckle. Beatrice lets the sound settle like a hollow rattle in tin. It’s not particularly emotional in breadth, but there’s a certain gravitas in severity - an undercurrent of compulsion that tugs somewhere at her gut. The image Beatrice’s mind conjures seems contextually ridiculous…Ava, a teen mom…

Mary sidesteps and aims for bare truth. “You were coming back,”

Back. Back to Cat’s Cradle. Back to demons and wraiths and tarasks - beasts and aberrations of hell sent to slaughter and slay their way to heaven’s barring gates. Back to underhanded plots and ploys played by hands of greater forces than their own. Dead legacies, scornful allies. Unanswered questions and unfulfilled agendas. And as much shelter as the OCS promised her…Beatrice wondered if it was even worth it past what they were asking in return of a dead girl. A child, who barely remembered how to walk after they’d ripped her from the fabric of some primordial beyond.

“Turns out Beatrice was right. Thoughtless and self centered. But at least I’m honest.”

_You’re not. You’re none of those things._

“You’re not thoughtless. Or self centered.” Mary supplements. But Ava just brushes past, eyes pinned forward into void as the white headlights highlight particles on the highway. Here in murkiness and isolation, they are like a dark submarine crawling on the bottom of the ocean.

“Heh...yes I am. I would’ve hit him if I wasn’t.” Beatrice finally looks down to acknowledge the scrawny frame curled up on his side on her lap. His breaths warm and curl around his face in sleep. Short tuffs of hair weeding across his forehead. Beatrice idly brushes a dark lock free of is young laxing brow.

He’s only a child.

“I would’ve dragged him back to the mission kicking and screaming if I wasn’t so selfish.”

Mary says nothing to this, the crest of her profile highlighted in steeping glow. The road outside roaring endlessly on in night.

And for the entire ride back Ava’s tears are silent, gaze unblinkingly fixed to the twinkle of lights over the bluff.

**Author's Note:**

> “Aye! Aye! Espere, espere, espere!” - Hey! Hey! Wait, wait, wait!  
> “Yo siempre se lo mejor, eh?” - I always know best, huh?  
> “No estes enjoada,” - Don’t be mad  
> “Tengo una bolsa,” - I have a bag  
> “No lo suficiente,” - not sorry enough  
> “Porque soy una carga y un lisiado,” - Because I’m a burden and a cripple  
> “Cállate,” - shut up  
> “Es verdad!” - it’s true!  
> “Eso es una mentira! - “ - That’s a lie  
> “No me dejes solo! Por favor!” - Don’t leave me alone! Please!
> 
> “Niño estúpido…” - stupid kid…
> 
> I was talking to a friend about how they thought Ava was pretty callous in just leaving Diego all on his lonesome at the orphanage. And I’ll admit, I thought it was a bit out of character for her to leave him in the nun’s care. But I was thinking - what was she supposed to do, adopt him? It’s not realistic, and it’s not sustainable, and it’s a tragic naive recipe for a social services disaster and it’s exactly the kind of thing her well meaning but inexperienced heart would do and oh my god Ava as an irresponsible big sister caretaker wreck who’s ultimately aware of the infeasabilmty of her unemployed broke ass taking care of her little brother who likely has expensive medical needs on the streets - which doesn’t even begin to touch on the literal demons, secret ninja nun society, and whatever century long ploy Adriel’s been devising that she’s unwillingly being dragged into! Yeah that’s a great environment for a kid! So maybe we can all just take a step back and realize that there’s a little bit more to the context that meets the eye and Ava is not what we would call ‘selfish’ or ‘irresponsible’ but just the opposite in sacrificing her ties to any and all sense of normality! Including! Her one and only friend/family member for his own safety!…ANYWAY
> 
> Please comment freely and constructively. Feedback, both positive and critical, helps more than you know.


End file.
